After Years of Cooking His Signature Healthful Haute Cuisine at a Variety of Upscale Restaurants, Chef and Cookbook Author Michel Nischan Found That He Longed for the Simple Country Cooking His Mother Had Prepared with Ingredients Straight from the Family's Backyard Garden. In Homegrown Pure and Simple, you'll discover 80 sensational flavor-packed recipes that combine Michel's heart-healthy approach to food with his love for gardening, organic ingredients, and the simplicity of his mother's down-home cooking. Whether you have your own garden or take advantage of the excellent produce from your local farmers' market, this informative cookbook provides an abundance of culinary wisdom, including Michel's knowledgeable advice on growing organically; buying responsibly raised meat, poultry, and fish; and selecting impeccably fresh seasonal vegetables. Mint is often the first thing to come up in the garden in spring, and you'll love it as part of a tangy marinade for lamb chops. Bright green sugar snap peas are one of summer's finest crops-as beautiful in the garden as they are delicious in a sweet-savory salad tossed with fennel, onions, and a grilled peach dressing. And when strawberries are at their ripest, invite your friends and neighbors for dessert and serve Cardamom-Strawberry Short Biscuits. They'll think they've died and gone to heaven. Recipes include salads and soups, main courses and side dishes, breakfasts and breads, desserts, and a fabulous chapter on extending the harvest with lost-art techniques like pickling and canning.

When fall and winter come along, you'll be delighted to have jars of preserves, pickled eggplant, infused oils, and homemade applesauce at the ready for easy meat planning. Homegrown Pure and Simple brings the bounty of nature's harvest straight to your table. Book jacket.